A sweater hand-knit by democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi sold for
$49,000 Thursday night at a fundraising auction in Burma’s commercial
capital Rangoon.
The red, green and blue V-neck, whose initial bidding price was
$6,000,was sold at an event organized by Suu Kyi’s National League for
Democracy party. A Burmese radio station won the bidding war for the
sweater, the Associated Press reported.
(PHOTOS: Aung San Suu Kyi’s Path to Victory, by James Nachtwey)
Forty-nine thousand dollars is a lot of money in one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia; it’s equivalent to about 23 years of income for
a local taxi driver (although he probably wouldn’t need the sweater in a
city where temperatures rarely drop below 70 degrees Fahrenheit). The
money will be used to pay for the education of children in need, the
organizers said.
